It’s official: I’m leaving Citizenside to take on a post as Account Director at Edelman Digital.

There I’ll be designing interactive communications strategy and working up crisis response scenarios, as well as a whole bunch of other fascinating stuff.

I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in. It seems like interesting times at Edelman. The company has grown from about 3000 to nearly 4000 employees in little over a year, and the 80-person London Digital team, which I am joining, was just 35 strong only a year ago. I’ll be working with, among others, Tim Callington and Robin Hamman – who I first met when he was Head of Blogging at the BBC. (Yes, the BBC once had a Head of Blogging).

It’s been a heck of a ride at Citizenside. Since I joined in February, Citizenside’s member base has grown from 50,000 to nearly 70,000 members around the world. The Arab Spring and the Occupy protests have really started to grow Citizenside’s membership internationally and flood the feed with truly excellent photos. In January 2012, Citizenside will unveil Citizenside 3.0, a completely redesigned website that focuses much more on community interactivity.

This is the historic moment for citizen journalism, and I think the next couple of years will be really interesting for Citizenside. I wish the Citizenside team in Paris all the best in their continued quest to fully realize the potential of citizen media.

As for me, I’m really looking forward to new challenges, and working with the award-winnning team at Edelman.

Onwards!